Digital Humanities and Media Studies

Our UCHI Fellow will be presenting their research talk on “Contesting Colonialism: Puerto Ricans and the Politics of Welfare in the 20th Century” followed by a light reception. For more information, please visit https://humanities.uconn.edu/fellowships/current-and-previous-fellows/. If you require accommodation for this event, please contact uchi@uconn.edu at least one week prior to the event.

Learn to look with a critical eye
Friday, January 31,
12:15–12:45pm

Tap your powers of observation and
investigate a single work of art through
close looking and discussion with
Amanda Douberley, Assistant Curator/
Academic Liaison.

The focus of this month's subject is a print in the Democracy of Print exhibition.

Develop your critical thinking skills by learning to look at objects in detail. This skill is useful in navigating everyday life, your job or studies.

"Black Lives Matter and the Politics of Value"
Alena Wolflink, Beloit College

Monday, February 3
12:15pm in Oak 438

Sponsored by the Political Theory Workshop and UConn Humanities Institute

Nancy Baym

Senior Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research New England; Research Affiliate, Comparative Media Studies/Writing, MIT

The Relational Affordances of Platforms

People have been socializing on the internet for nearly fifty years. In recent years, online social life has become increasingly concentrated in a relatively small number of commercial platforms. How can we make sense of the impacts they are having on our relational lives? How can we theorize platforms when they are constantly changing and used in so many different ways? In this talk, Nancy Baym draws on a range of her recent research on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to articulate a model for understanding platforms as the dynamic, unstable entities they are, and to explore their roles in shaping, constraining and opening up new possibilities for relationships in contexts ranging from close romantic bonds to online communities and the ties that connect musicians to their audiences. The talk further considers how these platforms commodify the relational interactions that take place through them, and how their design choices have fostered environments in which relationships become tools for profit.

Nancy Baym is a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, where she conducts basic research into how people understand and act with new communication technologies in their relationships. A pioneer in the field of internet research, Baym wrote some of the first articles about online community in the early 1990s. With Jean Burgess, she is the author of Twitter: A Biography (forthcoming 2020, NYU). Other books include Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection (2018, NYU), Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2010, Second Edition 2014, Polity), Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method (co-edited with Annette Markham, 2010, Sage), and Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom and Online Community (2000, Sage). She was a co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers and served as its second president. She has been recognized with the Frederick Williams Prize for Contributions to the Study of Communication and Technology awarded by the International Communication Association, the naming of the Nancy Baym Book Award by the Association of Internet Researchers, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg. Most of her papers and more information are available at http://nancybaym.com

This event is sponsored by UCHI Digital Humanities & Media Studies, the Department of Communication, and the UCHI Future of Truth Initiative